CyberWire Daily - Digital Mindhunters: a novel look at cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. [Special Edition]

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

In this special edition podcast, N2K's Executive Editor Brandon Karpf talks with author, CEO and cybersecurity advisor Dr. Bilyana Lilly about her new novel "Digital Mindhunters." Book Overview In a high-stakes game of espionage and deception, a female analyst uncovers Russia's plot to wield artificial intelligence, espionage, and disinformation as weapons of chaos against the United States. As she races against time to thwart an assassination plot, she finds herself entangled in a web of international intrigue and discovers a parallel threat from a Chinese spy network aiming to steal data, manipulate American voters, and harness technology to dismantle the very foundations of U.S. democracy. In a world where lies are a weapon and trust is a luxury, she navigates the treacherous worlds of arms dealers, hackers, and spies to protect her country. About the author Dr. Bilyana Lilly is a cybersecurity and information warfare expert. She advises senior executives in the private and public sector on how to mitigate cybersecurity risk across their enterprises. Dr. Lilly serves on the Advisory Boards of the venture capital firm Night Dragon and the cybersecurity firm RunSafe Security. She chairs the Democratic Resilience Track of the Warsaw Security Forum and is an adjunct senior advisor for critical infrastructure and resilience at the Institute for Security and Technology. Her previous roles include a manager at Deloitte's Financial Cybersecurity Practice and a fellow at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Lilly holds a PhD in policy analysis and cyber security, and three master's degrees, including an honors degree from Oxford University. Her book "Russian Information Warfare" became a bestseller and is on display at the Pentagon. Dr. Lilly is a mentor and a speaker at RSA, DefCon, CyCon, and the Executive Women's Forum. She has been denounced by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and called cyber expert by Tom Hanks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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connecting users only to specific apps, not the entire network, continuously verifying every request based on identity and context, Thank you. organization with Zscaler, Zero Trust, and AI for joining us. On this N2K CyberWire special edition, Dr. Biliana Lilly, CEO, cybersecurity advisor, and author, speaks with N2K CyberWire's executive editor, Brandon Karpf, about her new novel, Digital Mind Hunters. And we are welcoming back to the podcast, Dr. Biljana Lili. Biljana, so great to have you back. Thank you for having me back, Brandon. I'm really glad to be here again. So today what we want to do is we want to dive in deep and spend a lot of time on your new book. This is not your first book. I believe it's your third, right? That's right. It's your third book and you are no stranger to this audience. Everyone here should know you as an expert in information warfare and the geopolitical environment.

This book is a little different. It covers on those topics, but this is your first foray into novel writing. So I just want to read the description here because this book is a lot of fun. So the book title is Digital Mind Hunters. So in a high stakes game of espionage and deception, a female analyst uncovers Russia's plot to wield artificial intelligence, espionage, and disinformation as weapons of chaos against the United States. As she races against time to thwart an assassination plot, she finds herself entangled in a web of international intrigue and discovers a parallel threat from a Chinese spy network

aiming to steal data, manipulate American voters, and harness technology to dismantle the very foundations of U.S. democracy. So this really does have it all. I think it covers the environment very well, especially this year, 2024. Can we start with where did this come from? Oh, that's a great first question. So many answers, Brandon. Where did it come? So throughout my career, I've been always an academic and I always stick to fact-based research. But from my experiences, I tend to be extroverted and I talk to a lot of people because I discovered that I first started in nuclear disarmament and nuclear terrorism and missile defense. That was my focus at the United Nations in Geneva.

And a lot of the treaties that I was working with, they were already well established from years before I joined the field. And there was a lot of literature to consume on the topic and it was all already written and peer-reviewed. But when I switched to cybersecurity and information warfare, our field is so fast-paced and it's changing and evolving all the time. And in order to be up to date on the latest developments, you have to talk to people. You can't just sit at home. You can go through blogs and communicate with a lot of experts and peers, of course, online. But speaking to people is so important. So throughout my research for my second book, Russian Information Warfare,

I went to a lot of countries closer to Russia and countries in Europe, and I started talking to people and government officials, intelligence officers, they started telling me about cases that have not been published that I started to dig into. So I realized there is so, our field is so fascinating and we have so many creative characters, both on the, on the villain side or the enemies or adversaries and on the defender side. And those heroes aren't celebrated enough. So I wanted for this book to play a little bit with the information that I have that I usually like. I create articles that are, there's no feeling in them, no creativity, but I wanted this to be more emotional, to be more creative and to be also a tribute to a lot of my friends

in the field. So almost every character is inspired by someone I know. And if you read the book, there are some little Easter eggs throughout it that only people that would read their character would know it's them because they're very personal. So that's also a shout out to our community. And I wanted to show how diverse and awesome it is. I mean, that makes sense to me, especially in the context that you shared

of your early career working in nuclear treaties and some of those other technological policy fields where, as you said, there were years of negotiations, international law, treaties, agreements around those technologies. We don't have that yet in artificial intelligence or even in really cyber operations. I mean the Talon Manual, but that hardly would be considered an international agreement or treaty, even in information warfare.

I mean information warfare has existed for centuries, but there are no treaties on that. So I like your approach of how do we contend with these things where there's, sure, a lot of literature, but no formal documentation. And one of the ways that we can contend with that is through fiction. I agree with that. And some aspects of information warfare that I really wanted to show in the book, but not only tell people about them, I wanted wanted to show them is that information warfare and that type of threat targets every single individual it's not just the decision makers it's not just the soldiers on the battlefield it's every single person that's a citizen of a particular country or in a particular country that becomes a target and we don't really talk about this as much a lot of

and and for for a good reason a lot of the U.S. constituents, they care about their backyard. They care about their community, about the topics that are directly relevant to their day-to-day lives. They don't care about whether the Russians and the Chinese are launching cyber attacks against the Pentagon. But the disinformation narratives, they reach them because a lot of them, they have evolved to a point where they target the individual down to the household level. So I tried to show for a few

stories of more unwitting participants. In that case, there are some more pejorative terms like useful idiots. I tend to stay away from those because at some point, I guarantee you every single one of us has clicked on a story they should have clicked on. So I think all of us belong to that particular group. So I try to show that as well. This issue affects all of us, no matter what level of your career development you are, whether you work for the government or the military or not. Everyone has vulnerabilities. Everyone is a target, and everyone's capable of experiencing that level of manipulation because we're all emotional and we all have those various beliefs and wants and needs and desires and that can be manipulated by a winning adversary. And you show that in this book.

I mean, you show that very clearly that is more than just the decision makers. Can you maybe walk us through, in recent past, some of the stories you drew on for influence and to guide your writing? Sure. For example, I'm originally from Bulgaria, and I speak the language, which I'm glad not many people speak it because it will be a waste of your time to study Bulgarian. Go study Mandarin or Russian, something more useful, or French. Don't study Bulgarian. But since I was born in the country and I spoke it for 19 years before I left, I speak Bulgarian. So I looked at a lot of primary sources when I started doing my research on Russian information

warfare. And I've known this before. From before, I've heard rumors. And then I confirmed through actual literature that a number of Bulgarian journalists, a number of high-level politicians, influential politicians in my own home country have been influenced by Russia because they studied in Russia, because they received funding from Russia. And all of those stories show how you can have a Manchurian candidate in your own country. And you can say, hey, but Biljana, that's like Eastern Europe. No one cares. It's so close to Russia.

We're the United States of America here. We're different. Right. Yeah. But over the past year, if you look at how the Russians have been behaving all across Europe, and that's not only in Bulgaria, that's in Finland, in Sweden. There are many cases where the Russians have actually sponsored individuals or worked with influencers from different countries. And there is this very interesting campaign that was revealed earlier this year that's called the Voice of Europe campaign. in the Czech Republic, in Prague, I think, that was set up supposedly to give voice to far-right politicians in Europe. And it was used to actually sponsor those politicians

with Russian money to influence European politics and to propagate anti-Ukrainian views throughout Europe. So those are the types of techniques that the Russian government is known very well to have used over decades already in countries closer to Russia and now in Germany and the Netherlands and I believe in the United States. We had several indictments recently that showed that there are influencers that have been receiving money from Russia and that's typical for them. That's a part of their playbook. Yeah, there were just in the last few months of those podcasters that were getting paid like

$100,000 an episode. And I mean, we're on a podcast right now. I can tell the audience, that's not how much money we make per episode. Brandon, who's paying you, Brandon? Do you know your sources? How well do you know your sources? I mean, and we're a pretty successful company, but 100,000 episode is insane. Absolutely insane. But, you know, again, you know, because the examples you gave, far-right influencers,

far-right media personalities, the examples that we had in the last few months in this country, Tim Pool and others, again, more far-right kind of reactionary. I don't even want to use the term right because it's really reactionary. But it does seem, and maybe this is partly just my impression or what we hear about in news, that the Russians specifically tend to push these reactionary type characters. Why is it the reactionaries as opposed to like the collectivists that they are promoting in this way? Extreme narratives thrive on emotion and ignorance. And we are today, we are, especially in the United States, we're so conditioned to taking our news

from irrepeatable sources, from X, from Reddit. This is like the fast food, the junk food of our media consumption. Why do we get news from there versus the healthy stuff, which is reputable sources, newspapers that have existed for decades and have a reputation for producing high-quality, fact-based articles? That's one of the issues. So they thrive on that unregulated, wild west environment that our information space has become.

And they look for individuals that already have existing grievances and they amplify them. And they will focus on those people, on those marginalized groups, and push them because they already are prone to extremist beliefs, prone to perhaps violence. And then you have the Russian narratives or Chinese narratives

or Iranian narratives that just serve as the matchbox that just lights the fire. Understood. Well, you know, the other component that you had included in this book beyond just the, I shouldn't say just the, but beyond the assassination plot, beyond the artificial intelligence. Who cares? Just a few assassinations. We'll replace them. But there was this other component of the Chinese spy network and stealing data, right? And it was just like the stealing of data, just collecting massive amounts of data.

Like the stealing of data, just collecting massive amounts of data. And can you kind of, where did that come from? And how does that play into this larger environment in our world, right? But obviously represented in your novel. China. That's like the number one threat. Like I literally just plagiarized. I didn't even have to be creative there. You just have to start reading literature on what the Chinese have been doing for decades.

Even back to APT1. Yes, the first report, which was great, by the way. I've read that report and I am so glad that the U.S. government saw the light of day. How about that? It became publicly available and then from there set a precedent for our cyber free intelligence culture. And I think that's a thread that we will start probably because of the administration that now is going to take the White House. We're going to see more of a focus on China, which I think is a great development. Regardless of which side you're on during the elections, I think that's one silver lining we can look at. I think the Chinese government has gone largely without consequences for a long time. And they're stealing information, IP from companies that are on US soil, that are critical infrastructure for

companies that have presence in China. And they have been very aggressive towards Taiwan, towards Hong Kong. And those are topics that I am glad to see that we're going to hopefully start addressing and paying more attention to. Right. Well, and in the context of digital mind hunters, reading this, it's like one thing after another. It's just nonstop, all these plots and schemes and adversaries and capabilities. And it's fun. It's like one thing after another. It's just nonstop, all these plots and schemes and adversaries and capabilities. And it's fun. It's engaging. And as a casual reader, I find myself going, well, yeah, I mean, of course, it's fiction.

That's a lot of fun. But what I hear you saying is this is real. This is what's actually happening. I spoke to my editor and my editor was like, Biljana, there are too many friends. You have to focus on one. Your reader will be too distracted. They can take a breath. But then I'm like,

but this is what the US is facing on a daily basis. If you're a critical infrastructure company, a hospital, one day you're fighting ransomware from North Korea, the other day it's from Russia, then you have an espionage campaign from China. The friends don't wait for each other. They're not like in line and you're waiting like a conveyor line to face one actor than

another. They're attacking us all constantly. And I think it's, I wanted to convey that action-packed landscape because this is what we are facing as the United States, as still a leader globally. And I believe that hopefully also shows a little bit of the challenges that our media faces and our government faces and our organizations, especially the private sector companies that are small and medium-sized companies that don't have necessarily the resources of our adversaries. Because our adversaries are nation states.

And then you hear that they've hacked a dam in Texas, a water dam in Texas. But like the poor water dam, it doesn't have thousands of millions of dollars that the Russians are pouring into their cyber forces to attack that dam. That's a very asymmetric threat. And I wanted to show how targets could be individuals, they could be small companies, they could be people that are completely out of our field, but they're targeted by sophisticated adversaries that have built their resources, capabilities, and tactics and strategies for years.

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Learn more at blackcloak.io. The important thing that's sticking out in my mind is, even though this is a novel, it's still very useful because it's representing very real threats in very real ways. And it's representing those threats in a way that is much more approachable for the average reader and even the layperson who might not be steeped in this world, certainly not like you are. What is the ideal end state then for this book? I mean, who do you want reading this and what do you want them to take away from this? I want the people that are not listening to this podcast to

read this book. I want every single person that listens to this podcast to recommend it to someone who doesn't. Hey, Christmas present. A Christmas present, right? I mean, coming up. Exactly. Exactly. And why?

And why is that? Why is it those people? Because we focus so much on the code and not the context, but the context matters a great deal. The strategies behind these threat actors, the way their thinking is shaped, their end goals. They're usually written in Mandarin or Russian

and now we have translations and we talk about those ideas in think tanks and we use technical jargon, but the targets are individuals that are not in these fields. So I want people to be entertained, but also learn from that book and condition themselves to think that what they're reading online,

the types of emails they're clicking on, they may have someone behind them that is a nation state level threat actor that is attacking them for different purposes, not just for themselves, but their channels to a much larger goal. So I'm hoping, yeah, it's a great Christmas present, actually.

And it has some, you know, some Christmassy colors, a little bit of red, pink on the cover. So it fits with that theme as well. Yeah, I think that would be a good book. Someone told me they read it on the plane in one go.

So I'm already hearing from different friends who are about to write reviews and are sending me really positive comments. So I'm really glad it's all well received. I might send it to my sister and my dad. I mean, I love that context. Perfect. Well, so you clearly did a tremendous amount of research for this book. And of course,

that's part of your life. That's what you do. You're a well-known, respected analyst and advisor to many organizations. But when writing this book, going through the process and really putting the finishing touches on it, what did you learn? What did you learn while writing this and publishing this? Someone told me, so the book had eight drafts, I think. And by the way, thank you for reading one of them. You suffered through one of the last ones, but it was still terrible, especially. you for reading one of them you suffered for one of the last ones but it was still terrible especially there was a lot of lecturing especially in the beginning so I think one of the main things was that stuck with me was first of all how to write better I had a lot of friends go through

a lot of the earlier drafts and tell me Biljana you need to add description you need to add emotion but one of the comments that really stuck to me was someone that said, Liliana, your main character, Riley, she carries her patriotism like an armor. You can't figure out at all what she's thinking. Enough with the section pack, put a little bit of emotion. I said, oh, the heck with emotion, who cares? That was my first response. So I think I learned to express myself a little better. Because Riley is based a lot on me. So and a few of other.

I was going to say. Yeah. So I think it became clear. Riley does have a striking resemblance to Biliana. Even people that see the cover of the book say, Biliana, did you pose for this front cover? No, this is completely animation. This has nothing to do with me. She's just, you know, blonde.

I had the same thought, by the way. I had the same thought. I wondered if it was you on the cover. It's not me on the cover. But there are a lot of strong women in our field that are very, because they're very business oriented, because they need to show strength. They are not as emotional as you would expect a woman to be, but they're incredible leaders in the field. And I hope they see themselves specifically in this book.

And those are Galina Antova, Katie Moore, Laura Servant, Fiona Hill. Those are the types of women that I deeply admire and respect. And I thought about this as I was writing the book. And some of them have characters in the book, actually. That's wonderful. I hope they pick it up and see themselves. That's good. So Riley, and let's talk about this main character, because this main character does seem like you in a lot of ways.

And the book opens in this absolutely insane situation that Riley finds herself in. And that's based on a true story, which is really hard to believe. Just tell us what, I mean, I don't want to ruin it for the readers, but tell us the true story of what happened. And then the readers can get the book and be thrilled in the first opening pages but the fact that it's a true story is pretty extraordinary so part of that story are true parts aren't. I have been chased by a Russian soldier, and it was because I was at a Russian military expo, which I went to legally, although I had to call a few Russian colonels. I will remember staying at the office until 2 a.m., so it's Moscow time in the morning,

so I can call them in the morning and request a pass for certain events. They were very surprised because no one else has done that. And all of a sudden they hear this Russian-speaking Bulgarian representing herself calling from the United States asking for a pass to a military expo. A lot of them were very sleepy. I could hear it in their voice. They were confused. They asked me to call again. I did. So finally I got access. So I walked through the biggest, the largest Russian military expo with a few other representatives of the United States. I always was accompanied by someone, but there were moments when I wasn't. And one of them was I was walking through this kiosk. It's almost like Black Hat Arsenal, where you have the different companies,

booths everywhere. And it's similar, but with military, only with military manufacturers in Russia. You have Almazante that basically builds the missile defense system. You have the Jiryu over there too. Someone asked me if I wanted to go and teach at one of their academies that teaches the soldiers how to fire a skander. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, right. I'm going. Yep. I had that.

I spoke to a Russian robot. I asked it to sing me a song. It sang me a song. A lullaby in Russian. That was very cute. Military robot. And then on one of those kiosks, there was a massive display of photos of the different, all of Russia's top military leadership from the general staff, from the different, you know, GRU, FSB. And I don't think we really have those photos, but they're like on display right there for a touchscreen. And I started looking for the touchscreen and taking photos.

And a Russian soldier, uniformed Russian soldier comes to me and basically turns me around shakes me in terms are talking around it who are you and in Russian and shouts at me but he's really tall and I'm told I'm wearing high heels so I'm told to but he's taller than me if you're looking down on me and trying to be you and I'm like I'm a visitor I have a pass when I show him the pass I put him in his face and he then then gets a little confused and said, what are you doing? Still like angry, but a little confused. I'm like, I'm really like poised and calm. And I say, I'm here.

I'm here. I'm authorized to be here. I'm taking photos of this display, which is on display in the public park part of the expo. And then he thought for a second, he said, you can't do that. And he grabbed my phone. He literally took my phone away from my hands. And I was shocked. And I'm looking back at him.

And I'm also like completely surprised by the situation. I'm surrounded by other Russian soldiers in uniform. And I'm like, just in a split second, my defiance kicked in and said, no. And I grabbed it. I pulled it back and I ran. He ran after me. He chased me for a while. And then I hid outside. There was an actual Russian military concert and I hid. And then US general actually came to my aid and we went back to the Russian soldier. And I basically told the general what I did and I told him I'm really

afraid they're going to arrest me and I've done something illegal and he said no, you don't do anything illegal, we're going back. I'm like, well, how are you going back? I don't want to go back, you're going to arrest me. He's like, no, come with me and we went back. I'm going to keep his name private because I don't know, I haven't asked him for permission to share his identity but we went back and he went to the soldier and said, I want to speak to your superior. And all of a sudden, his superior shows up and they pull us in a room, in a back room. And we sit, me, the U.S. general, then the Russian superior and the Russian soldier. And U.S. general says, Biljana, translate for me.

And then I'm sitting there white as a sheet, literally like, oh my God, we're going to get him. This is going to be an international disaster. And the general just put a few names and said, this is my colleague, and you have offended her. You can't touch her or grab her phone. And I know this and this person from your ministry, and I'm going to call him and complain. And at the moment, I said the names, both soldiers on the other side just went. Wow.

Like white. And the other soldier who was carrying me got up, started kissing my hand and crying. And it was the most embarrassing experience. And we went outside and I told the general who was with me, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to disrespect him. I hope he doesn't get fired. And the U.S. general turned to me

and said, Biljana, he's not going to get fired. He's going to get a promotion because he made an American fear him. Damn those games. So that's He's going to get a promotion because he made an American fear him. Even for him. Damn those games. So that's that story. But then there's another story where I did get into a Russian military conference that I wasn't supposed to get into. But that's all I'm going to say because I don't want to keep that private.

But that whole part of O'Reilly going into a Russian military conference, that is 99% true. And you very clearly, those two stories, you clearly put together into one here for the opening of the book. So it's very exciting. And I just, you have lived quite the number of adventures in that part of the world. Thanks, Brandon. Thank you. So I would love to kind of take this framing and the topics that you've incorporated into Digital Mindhunters and then bring it back to our world, what's happening now, and what you think we can see or what we will see in the next few years. We just had an election in this country.

Obviously, a number of countries around the world have had elections. The war in Ukraine is in the middle of escalation. Just this past week, Ukraine struck into Russia using U.S. missiles. And then actually just yesterday, Russia launched a brand new ballistic missile striking Ukraine. And of course, they had notified U.S. ahead of that strike. But clearly escalatory actions in that part of the world. Meanwhile, what's happening in China is notable as well. Their economy still seems to be struggling significantly, but at the same time,

more control in the last few weeks in Hong Kong. So, you know, from your perspective, the next two years, what should we expect to see and what should our responses be as the United States? So first on Ukraine, I regret to say, I think we're too late. We should have been a lot more aggressive and a lot faster with supporting Ukraine when it mattered. The war escalated. It started in 2014. We gave up Crimea. We let Ukraine deal with it. Then the Russians got emboldened.

And in February 2022, they crossed the border finally with troops. And although there was a very concerted effort from the European Union, from the US, we were supportive. And that's fantastic. We finally decoupled from Russia's, from our energy dependence

or European energy dependence with Russia. Fantastic. Finally, we've been talking about this for decades, never did it. Finally, finally started moving in the right direction. But I think we should have been a lot more firm, a lot more, I wouldn't say aggressive, but definitely we should have sent more support to Ukraine earlier. The Ukrainians have been asking us for offensive capabilities for a long time, and we have been very slow.

And the future President Trump has several times said that he's going to even end the war before he gets in office. Good luck with that. Let's see. Um, but, um, I think, um, on that, I, on that front, I think the deciders, those who are going to decide when the war ends will be president Zelensky and president Putin. Those are the two negotiators. And we'll see what happens. I can't comment on what President Zelensky will be. I sympathize with his position right now. He's been repelling the Russians, a much more formidable adversary for years already. And right now, the attacks that we're seeing are just too late. And right now, the attacks that we're seeing are just too late. So that's my position on that war. I guess we will see, I probably expect to see some sort of stalemate or a prolonged conflict over the past four years. But I also know our Ukrainian community, our Ukrainian colleagues, they're tired.

They have been fighting a war for a long time, and it's hard to assess the morale, the level of morale across Ukraine, because we're not really getting the full information, the full picture from all the individuals that are literally fighting for their lives and for survival. So on that front, that's what I, those were my comments. With regards to cyber operations, I would expect because of President Trump's position on China, he's announced that he's going to create tariffs against Chinese goods up to, I believe, 60%. He's going to tax them that much. Because of the trade wars that already existed in the first Trump administration and now the second, I think we're likely to see more aggressive behavior from China in cyberspace because there's nothing to really deter them. And I would expect them to try to get back at us through these methods. And because there are a lot of, I wish I spoke Mandarin,

I wish my knowledge of China was as deep as my knowledge of Russia, but I'm still a student there, I'm still learning. But from what I'm understanding is that the Chinese government has a clear position that they want to isolate and assimilate or reunify with Taiwan at some point. And that period may be coming close.

Probably it will be in the period of the next 10, 15 years. And in that case, we have seen China prepositioning malware in our military networks. We heard some great assessments on exactly why this is dangerous recently at the Data Tribe Summit that we both attended. Because of all of these behaviors that we're seeing and tactics on their part, I would expect Chinese cyber operations to increase against US critical infrastructure, but also Chinese influence

operations because they've already... We have several examples during the fires in Maui, for example. I believe it was the fires where the Chinese said that they were caused by the US that created some sort of weather weapon. They were caused by the U.S. that created some sort of weather weapon. And then they were also trying to influence the election, but at more of the congressional level this year. So they are involved in trying to influence us at different levels. with the Taiwanese elections, the influence operations against that, how they have been, how they've been launching cyber attacks against Taiwanese financial institutions. I think these are all blueprints

that they could also use against them. So I think in the next years, and so this is on China and Russia, I tend to think if President Putin gets what he wants and we have certain end of the war in Ukraine, then perhaps cyber operations against the United States aren't going to be as prevalent from Russia. But I don't bet on that because then the Russian government will still have perhaps some of

its resources free to continue to target us. I don't really know what exactly President Putin will decide there because ransomware manufacturers could say, okay, let's go back to target the United States, hospitals again, try to siphon money from there. But maybe there will be some sort of deal with the U.S. because of our leadership. And maybe they will reach some agreement that will result in a reduced number of cyber operations or reduced volume of cyber operations against the US. But I'm not willing to bet on that.

I think what we have seen in Europe lately suggests to me that the Russians and the Chinese will continue to try to influence us through influence operations, specifically disinformation, and through sponsoring influencers or politicians, because that has proven to be a successful tactic in other places. And we already had indications that that's been happening in the U.S. already.

Okay. Well, bringing it to your writing then, I mean, what is the next book? I mean, is the next one centered around china and and and their entry into influence operations it does seem a little new for china um i mean this is something that that russia all the way back into the ussr was well known to do um not a normal um activity for china outside of china itself of course course, internal to China, very focused on the psychological operations, but external to China, a little less so. But to your point, we see them starting to increase that op tempo,

increase the maturity of those operations. Is that potentially the subject of the next book? I mean, where's your head in that respect? Brandon, can I enjoy my moment of freedom and glory here before I start writing again? We need more. We need more. What does Riley do next?

That's a great question. I thought I had a few ideas. So one is Israel-Palestine. I think that conflict is terrible. Well, it's biblical. It's biblical but also it is so the killing of civilians is terrible it's indiscriminatory it's affecting other nations in the region but i but i've never really touched on that topic i've started i've obviously learned about israel and palestine for years when i was

in geneva this was a topic that was always discussed. And the close relationship between Israel and the United States is well known. So that conflict for me is we should reach a stalemate there. We should reach an agreement. We should figure out a solution that doesn't involve killing of children and civilians. That should stop. But I don't know what angle i would take there the other option is of course china and i think that's probably more likely as you pointed

out because i already have chinese for doctors and a and a spy spoiler alert in the book and i know more about the chinese than i know about the israelis and if i write something i want to write it from experience and i actually wanted to visit pal Palestine earlier this year, but I don't think that's going to happen for a while. Yeah, not right now. Not right now. But I want to visit Taiwan. I think while there's still a chance to do it.

And I think something I really want to highlight is, and I allude to it in this book, but I don't think I emphasize on it enough, how the years of preparation and the meticulous focus on a campaign that the Russians and the Chinese both have. Usually in the US, we think in four-year terms, because then the administration is likely to change and there will be new policies and all that. But our adversaries, or specifically dictatorial regimes, when you look at for how long their leaders have been in power, it's decades, it's not four years, they have long-term goals

and they outlast our administrations. So spies or individuals that have been positioned in certain levels of our government or private sector, they stay there for decades. And I know it's similar on the US side, but it's more, they are administrations that affect decisions and policies in Russia, on the side of the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians.

It's a more long-term strategy. And I want to show how those long-term strategies take fruit and how hard it is to identify them and eradicate them because of how, how, for how long they have been designed and how well they've been integrated in our system. So inside of red, for example,

that's a big deal to me. And I think, and to a lot of, a lot of individuals and a lot of companies, and we have many cases with some of our largest and most powerful and influential technology companies. You have those individuals literally working in those companies. So maybe I'll do something with that.

I haven't decided yet, but it will still be action-packed. Maybe there will be more than one villain. Maybe I'll bring Israel and Palestine and China into the mix. Fantastic. Well, I have thoughts, so we'll talk offline I'd love to hear them I'll share I think there's some the long view there's some very cool things that you can do

thinking about how that long view affects the course of history and I like the dichotomy between our in the western world relatively short view with the long view of those other cultures. Well, so I want to finish here with the last sentence in the introduction, which is, in a world where lies are a weapon and trust is a luxury, Riley must navigate the treacherous worlds of arms dealers, hackers, and spies to protect her country. And to me, that last line, protect her country, navigating this dark world, protect her country,

is something that you also seem very focused on doing. So thank you for bringing this book to the community. The book is Digital Mindhunters. Your goal is to protect your country. And we really appreciate it. So again, thank you for sharing it with us, Biljana. Thank you so much. And that's Dr. Biljana Lilly.

The book is Digital Mind Hunters. We will, of course, have a link in the show notes. It will make a great Christmas gift. So think about that for your families. We'll have you back on soon, Biljana. Thank you, Brandon. Our thanks to Dr. Biljana Lili for joining us. She is cybersecurity advisor and author.

The book is titled Digital Mind Hunters. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you back here next time.